Consumers and businesses increasingly rely on computers to store sensitive data. Consequently, malicious programmers seem to continuously increase their efforts to gain illegitimate control and access to others computers. Computer programmers with malicious motivations have created and continue to create viruses, Trojan horses, worms, and other programs meant to compromise computer systems and data belonging to other people. These malicious programs are often referred to as malware.
Security software companies are combating the growing tide of malware by creating and deploying malware signatures (e.g., hash functions that identify malware) to their customers on a regular basis. However, a significant amount of malware has not yet been identified. What is needed, therefore, is a process for detecting unidentified malware.